Keeping Your Focus

Sher Kirk, USP Operations Director

You know that feeling when you are trying to complete a complicated task on a deadline when your phone won’t stop ringing or colleagues keep popping up on Teams to ask questions? Arrgh! Right?

Work life is filled with interruptions, especially now that a lot of us work from home. Interruptions are more than just a minor annoyance. In fact, losing your focus has a measurable effect on your productivity and the quality of your work. On average, an interruption (regardless of duration) takes 23 minutes and 15 seconds to recover from (Gallup, 2020). Research found that an interruption of 2.8 seconds caused students to make twice the number of sequence errors as when they were not interrupted. An interruption of 4.4 seconds caused three times as many errors. (PsycNet: Trafton, Hambrick, 2013). Many of us feel some stress when interrupted, and sometimes we feel pressured to work faster to make up for lost time, leading to more mistakes. From a safety perspective, losing your focus on a job site can have more dire consequences than a missed deadline. 

So, what can we do to keep our focus?

Stop multitasking. While we feel more productive when we are addressing multiple jobs at one time, it is an illusion. We are simply switching between tasks rapidly, which decreases focus and increases stress and fatigue. It also increases the overall time it takes to complete all the tasks. Become a “serial singletasker.” Prioritize your tasks and work through them to completion, one at a time.

Control your phone and email – don’t let them control you. If you need to focus on something, put your devices on “do not disturb” and block the time you need to get the job done. You can set up your phone to accept calls and emails from priority contacts, so you can focus knowing that only something (or someone) truly important will interrupt you. Let your colleagues know that you are focusing on something and that you will check in with them intermittently. Their questions can be answered when you finish or take a break.

Look after your brain! Stay hydrated. Get enough sleep. Take breaks throughout the day. Take a short walk outside if you can. These strategies will help you keep your focus and stay productive. Most importantly, they keep you alert enough to recover quickly from distractions. Remember that staying alert and focused is vital to your safety on a job site, and your quality of work in any environment.